Shoe with soul gets its own air ticket
EUGENE, Ore. – Some say airline passengers don’t get no respect. But if you’re 10,000 years old, give or take, it’s a different story.
University of Oregon archaeologist Pam Endzweig escorted what may be the oldest shoe on Earth to Washington, D.C., recently to be featured in the current edition of the National Geographic.
The shoe got its own seat.
On page 79, a sandal woven of sagebrush bark more than 300 generations ago sits softly lit on a sheet of coarse brown paper, one of 11 examples of footwear illustrating the article “Why Every Shoe Tells a Story.”
The photo is sandwiched between a silk brocade high heel with silver chinchilla and a 32-inch-high black leather lace-up boot made for the House of Harlot.
Times do change.
The story of the Fort Rock sandals is well known, at least in Oregon.
The U of O’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History houses a cache of the ancient sandals found by the U of O’s Luther Cressman in a central Oregon cave in 1938.
They aren’t on public display and rarely leave their climate-controlled home.
But when National Geographic writer Cathy Newman called this year, it set in motion the first long-distance trip by one of the crowning glories of Oregon archaeology.
At first, Endzweig said, the magazine wanted the sandal brought to Paris, where photographer Mitchell Feinberg is based. But thoughts of getting the delicate artifact through customs put the chill on that.
Eventually, they settled on National Geographic headquarters in Washington, where Feinberg was going anyway to shoot a photo of a space boot for the article. But how to get the sandal to the capital?
“Of course, putting it in the mail was absolutely out of the question,” she said. “We’re dealing with something that is incredibly fragile.”
It was decided that Endzweig would act as courier. Not only did it get its own seat, but the museum designed a special case to make sure the sandal came back exactly as it left.
There were no peanuts – Styrofoam or salted – for this passenger. Only chemically inert materials were used for the packing and the box-within-a-box design meant that the sandal could be moved without human hands touching it.
“We wouldn’t have done this at all if we didn’t think we could do it safely,” Endzweig said. “But it’s a wonderful opportunity to get the word out about something that’s very important to us, and I’m glad we were able to do it.”
She said the biggest problem was explaining to each new flight attendant that the box had its own ticket and would not be traveling in the overhead bin.
If anyone asked what was inside, she said it was botanical samples.
Perhaps no other photograph in the pictorial has more to say about human culture. The frayed, worn sandal was perhaps worn next to a campfire at a time when the pyramids were just a gleam in the pharaohs’ eyes.
“It was not just the age but the story behind them,” she said.
“With these sandals you’ve got the element of continuity. They were making sandals 10,000 years ago, and they’re still making sandals today.”